The Creator Economy 2023 Report + INFOGRAPHIC

The Creator Economy 2023 Report + INFOGRAPHIC

What Is The Creator Economy in 2023

The Creator Economy represents a category of enterprises established by over 200 million individuals, including content creators, curators, social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers. These individuals utilize software and financial tools to support their expansion and revenue generation. Since our 2021 Creator Economy Report, there has been a 314% increase in the global content creator population.

Download our The Creator Economy 2023 Report for free

The Creator Economy includes the Influencer Marketing Industry valued at approximately $21.1 Billion by the end of 2023 and hundreds of new social start-ups which brings the total Creator Economy value to over $104.2 Billion and counting. The Influencer Marketing Industry has increased by approximately 53% in value since 2021 according to data compiled in our 2021 Creator Economy Report.

In a world where people increasingly desire convenient access to knowledge, experiences, and communities for interaction, the Creator Economy is founded on driven, creative, and talented individuals. These individuals employ digital platforms to launch their own enterprises, establish brands, and form communities.


Unlimited Opportunities for Creators

Content creators can monetize in several ways:

  • Sponsored Content
  • Affiliate Links
  • Tipping
  • Paid Subscription
  • Exclusive Content
  • Consulting
  • Merchandising
  • Events and Meetups

And there are a lot of different types of content creators:

  • Video Creators
  • Audio Creators (e.g. podcasters)
  • Course Creators
  • Gamers Resellers
  • Live Streamers
  • Meme Pages
  • Artists
  • Musicians
  • Photographers

The 2023 Creator Economy Survey

Stay Ahead of the Social Curve!

Our agency ran 2 different surveys, one for normal users and one for content creators. Together, both surveys collected a total of 1,600+ responses to questions about tipping, favorite social media as a content creator, why users support their favorite creators and much more.

2023 Creator Economy – Users Survey Methodology:

The data presented in this report was collected from 1,000 users based in the US who submitted an online survey in April 2023. Our target was users between 18 and 54+. Our goal was to understand their preferences when it comes to supporting their favorite creator. How they like to support it, which platforms and overall their behavior towards the creator economy.

2023 Creator Economy – Content Creators Survey Methodology:

The data presented in this report was collected from 660 creators based in the US who submitted an online survey in April 2023. Our target was creators between 18 and 54+. Our goal was to understand their preferences when it comes to creating content and how much money they are making. How many followers they have and overall valuable insights about their career.


Kickstart your influencer journey now

Partner with The Influencer Marketing Factory to leverage our extensive network of premium influencers. Streamline your campaign management from inception to conclusion, and attract your desired audience with compelling and engaging content.


2023 The Creator Economy Findings

After analyzing our results, we narrowed down five main findings. Which include:

  1. More than 40% of users tip creators an average of $5 to $10 on social media
  2. TikTok and YouTube are the top favored and top-earning platforms at a relatively even rate in 2023. For both TikTok and YouTube, 26% of creators say they are their favorite platforms and 26% say they earn the most on either platform.
  3. YouTube has consistently been the top platform for tipping creators with 29% of users favoring the platform in 2021 and 26% of users favoring the platform in 2023.
  4. The majority of content creators interviewed make between $50K and $100K per year.
  5. Only 4.8% of creators interviewed with more than 5M+ of followers reported earning more than $1M per year in 2023.

Below, you can find a few selected slides from our Creator Economy Report, that you can download for free.


Creator Economy And Social Media in 2023

Similarities Between Social Media in The Creator Economy

Similarities Between Social Media Platforms

A lot of major social media are working on new features to help and support creators and influencers earn revenues on a monthly basis.

The social media featured in our report are:

  • TikTok
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • Snapchat
  • Twitch

We also included (even if not social media):

  • Onlyfans
  • Roblox
  • Fortnite
  • Newsletters
  • Podcasts

Platforms For Creators in 2023

Stay Ahead of the Social Curve!

Our influencer marketing agency has reviewed and featured different platforms and tools that support creators in better managing their finances, revenue streams, weekly goals and much more.

Platforms for Creators mentioned in our report are:

  • CommentSold
  • Amazon Live
  • Ntwrk
  • Karat
  • Spotter
  • FourthWall
  • Linktree
  • LKT
  • Patreon
  • Kajabi
  • MightyNetworks
  • Jellysmack

The 2023 Creator Economy Infographic (Includes 2 Surveys)


Kickstart your influencer journey now

Partner with The Influencer Marketing Factory to leverage our extensive network of premium influencers. Streamline your campaign management from inception to conclusion, and attract your desired audience with compelling and engaging content.


What Is The Creator Economy (2021)

The creator Economy is a class of businesses built by more than 50 million content creators, curators, social media influencers, bloggers, and videographers that use software and finance tools to assist them with their growth and monetization.

Within a society that now seeks easy access to expertise, experiences and communities to engage with, the creator economy is built around highly motivated, creative and skilled individuals that are using digital platforms to start their own businesses, brands and communities.

Market size is 50+ million creators (46.7 million amateur creators, 2M+ professional creators), and paired with an influencer marketing industry size of $13.8 Billion in 2021 and the hundreds of new startups in the space, the total Creator market size is at least $104.2 Billion and growing by the day.


The Creator Economy Survey (2021)

These below are only some of the charts and insights you can find on our FULL report that you can download for FREE here.

Our agency ran 2 different surveys, one for normal users and one for content creators/influencers. Together, both surveys collected a total of 1,000 responses for questions about tipping, favorite social media as a content creator, why users support their favorite creators and much more.

Creator Economy – Users Survey Methodology:

The data presented in this report was collected from 600 users based in the US who submitted an online survey between August 30 and September 7th. Our target was users between 18 and 40+. Our goal was to understand their preferences when it comes to supporting their favorite creator. How they like to support it, which platforms and overall their behavior towards the creator economy.

Creator Economy – Content Creators Survey Methodology:

The data presented in this report was collected from 500 creators based in the US who submitted an online survey between August 30 and September 7th. Our target was creators between 18 and 40+. Our goal was to understand their preferences when it comes to creating content and how much money they are making. How many followers they have and overall valuable insights about their career.


The Creator Economy Findings (2021)

After analyzing our results, we narrowed down three main findings. Which include:

  1. Content Creators’ favorite platform is TikTok (30%) followed by Instagram (22%) and YouTube (22%). They also said that these three platforms are also where they make the most money: TikTok (24%), Instagram (22%), YouTube (20%)
  2. 58% of users say that in the next 12 months, would pay a monthly subscription fee between $1 and $15 to access their favorite creator’s exclusive content
  3. Creators’ main source of income is brand deals (31%). Followed in second place by their own brand/business (25%) and creator funds (15%)

Some other interesting insights:

You can find all our graphs and insights in our full Creator Economy report.


Creator Economy Infographic (Includes 2 Surveys) – (2021)


Creator Economy and Social Media (2021)

A lot of major social media are working on new features to help and support creators and influencers earn revenues on a monthly basis.

The social media featured in our report are:

  • TikTok
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Twitch

We also included (even if not social media):

  • Roblox
  • Newsletters
  • Podcasts and Audio rooms

Platforms for Creators (2021)

Our influencer marketing agency has reviewed and featured different platforms and tools that support creators in better managing their finances, revenue streams, weekly goals and much more.

Platforms for Creators mentioned in our report are:

  • Linktree
  • Patreon
  • MomentHouse
  • Koji
  • Stir
  • MightyNetworks
  • Pietra
  • Jellysmack
  • Cameo

The Creator Economy Quotes From Experts (2021)

We have interviewed 10+ experts from social media, platforms, tools, entrepreneurs, content creators and influencers.

These are just a few quotes you can find in our Creator Economy Report:

Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon

Creators are about to have leverage, control, and political and cultural influence to a degree that is unprecedented. The affordability, accessibility, and ubiquity of creation tools, coupled with the level of global connectivity of individuals is creating an irreversible movement in favor of explosive creativity. It’s never been a better time, in the history of humans, to be a creator. If you like to make things and you want to have a voice — NOW is the time to be alive.


Anthony Zaccaria, Alex Zaccaria, Nick Humphreys, Co-Founders of Linktree

As the internet becomes increasingly fragmented and the creator economy continues to experience rapid growth, Linktree has become a solution for more than 16 million users to curate an online ecosystem and seamlessly monetize their audience.

The Passion Fund we launched earlier this year celebrated the launch of Commerce Links and awarded creators with a big dream an investment and tools to help turn their passion into a career.

Commerce Links, powered by PayPal and Square, provides users the ability to engage in frictionless transactions, quicker paths to purchase for their customers and an ability to connect their online ecosystem to their products or services.

Our commerce offerings are ever growing, meeting creators where they need it most. Our most recent feature we introduced onto the platform is Music Link, which automatically displays the same song or album across all music streaming services to let users listen to content on their preferred platform, thus boosting streaming possibilities.

We will continue to roll out creator-focused partnerships, feature expansions, and product developments to ensure Linktree continues to be a launchpad for creators.


Dmitry Shapiro, CEO of Koji

Why are tools like Koji a huge opportunity for creators?

The introduction of the iPhone and App Store in 2007 forever changed what we can do with our phones, allowing developers to innovate, creating over 2 million apps, and the term “there’s an app for that”. The introduction of an App Store for Social Media Creators (Koji), brings the same dynamics to innovation in the creator economy, allowing developers to create countless new capabilities for social media creators to use on their links in bio. Today there are already over 100 apps in the Koji App Store, all taking advantage of common identity, payments, analytics, etc… allowing developers to do more in less time, and for their fans to have a radically more seamless experience.

How is the creator economy evolving in the next years?

Over the next few years, we will see a new generation of creators start to take advantage of these new creator economy tools, and redefine what it means to be a creator. While today we see very few creators making enough money to quit their jobs to be professionals, a middle class of creators will form, allowing hundreds of millions more creators to flourish.
Today’s hundreds of companies providing small parts of an entire creator solution will get refactored into apps that are available on a link in bio, renderable inside of every social network, with unified analytics, payments, notifications, etc.
In a few years we will look at the workflow of today’s creators and gasp at how draconian today’s approaches will seem!


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